help!

[badwulf]

Hi I'm not sure I'm in the right forum but I'm desperate.
My problem involves my _NEC+-RW ND-3530A dvd drive. It is only 2 months old and yesterday I installed something called starforce cleaner. Afterwards my dvd drive has failed to function meaning read or recognize any kind of disc cd or dvd. The drive is still listed under my computer but I keep getting message please insert disc. I've moved all my data to an external hard drive and reinstalled xp twice to no avail. I've also removed the drive from the computer and put it back again. No change. Can please someone offer some suggestions? Thanx in advance!

[Crypton]

hmm, that is definately strange. Did you download Starforce Cleaner from the official places, or from some third party that you do not normally get downloads from?

http://www.star-force.com/protection.phtml?c=91 (Offical Site)

I am going to look into that because I have seen this issue a few times around the net, including myself on a Plextor DVD-RW drive. While it was reading regular CD's just fine, it quit reading or recognizing DVD's of any type. Luckily I was still in warranty and was able to run a self diag on it and get an RMA with Plextor which they sent me a new one.

Anyways, I am not sure if it is even linked with the SF Remover at all or something else, but if so, it may be a certain version of the SF Remover, can you post what version you are running of the StarForce Remover?

I will search my files and see if I can find all of the ones I have downloaded in the past few months and see if I have a match for the version your using.

// Regards,
Crypton

[badwulf]

will do. I have to locate the file and then post response thanks!

[badwulf]

Here it is...
I downloaded this file from edonkey
Meta Tag Information
Availability 16
Format exe
Hash 667a268a46dd08899e373eedb870b2ad
Name Starforce Cleaner.exe
Size 18432
Type Pro

And here's a note I received (not sure if it came with download though)

Just a note to say that I did not create this Starforce cleaner tool,
and take no responsibility for any results you obtain when using it.
I just host it as a convenience.
It was originally distributed by either Codemasters or The Adventure Company

-- Jeff Jones
Also this note

Download and execute a file called StarForce Cleaner v 5.0
And bye bye StarForce
Modded bye SFxKaOs

And I also have this tool and was trying to use it after I knew things were really screwed up with my drive. But it's too damn complicated for me to figure out.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// //
// Starforce Nightmare //
// Enjoy! //
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Designed for NewAtapi

20.02.2005 1.12 Some little bug fixes to avoid crashs by starting the program
07.02.2005 1.11 Some little bug fixes
05.02.2005 1.10 Beta support added for following systems Windows 2000, Windows Me and Windows 98
03.02.2005 1.01 The problem by starting the program on XP systems without installed updates fixed
01.02.2005 1.00 First version





1. Overview
This tool lets you deactivate CDRom drives in your system. Actually it supports
not just deactivating of all drives on IDE channel, like star**** it do, but even a
cd drive separately. Also the combination of hard drive and cd drive on the same channel
would be possible too.
This program is the technical further stage of star**** project. The project star****
had to be freezed for undefined time because our development team has changed.
Before using this program keep in mind: all what you do, you do on your own risk.
Be carefull, if you are using it: not all features will work for every one, it depends
on your hardware and software combination.
If you are not sure about it, delete this program.
Important!!!
After long time beta testing I had to add this information, because not all drives fully
conform to ATA standards and not all commands are supported by those drives.
I don't mean just cd drives, there are LS 120, Zip, MO, Flash drives, even hard drives are involved, and so on. Also, the using of this program can cause physical damage of your IDE drives. There is no other way to find it out, if the drive is fully supported or not, as to try it! BUT THIS CAN CAUSE HARDWARE DAMAGE OF YOUR DRIVES! USE IT ALWAYS ON YOUR OWN RISK!
IF YOU ARE NOT SURE, DELETE THIS PROGRAM!
Please don't ask me about, should the program work for you or not, I can't know it for sure.


2. Short briefing (how to)
- IMPORTANT: For correct working you must have administrator rights

Control buttons purposes explanation
- "Disable ch1" // this button lets disable first IDE channel of built-in ATA controller (Primary Channel)
- "Disable ch2" // this button lets disable second IDE channel of built-in ATA controller (Secondary Channel)
- "Disable ATA" // this button lets disable built-in ATA controller
- "Disable CD" // this button lets disable installed ATAPI CDROMs on built-in ATA controller automatically
- "Disable node" // this button lets disable relation to SCSI CDROMs device nodes
.
.
- "Enable ch1" // this button lets reenable first IDE channel of built-in ATA controller (Primary Channel)
- "Enable ch2" // this button lets reenable second IDE channel of built-in ATA controller (Secondary Channel)
- "Enable ATA" // this button lets reenable built-in ATA controller
- "Enable CD" // this button lets reenable installed ATAPI CDROMs on built-in ATA controller automatically
- "Enable node" // this button lets reenable relation to SCSI CDROMs device nodes
----------------------------------------------------------------
If automatical handling doesn't help you to deactivate your drives, you can try its manual equivalent.

- "Pr.Master Off" // this button lets disable one installed drive in master position on Primary Channel
- "Pr.Slave Off" // this button lets disable one installed drive in slave position on Primary Channel
- "Sc.Master Off" // this button lets disable one installed drive in master position on Secondary Channel
- "Sc.Slave Off" // this button lets disable one installed drive in slave position on Secondary Channel
-
- "Pr.Mas-Sl Off" // this button lets disable two installed drives in master and slave positions on Primary Channel
- "Sc.Mas-Sl Off" // this button lets disable two installed drives in master and slave positions on Secondary Channel
-
- "Pr.M-Sc.M Off" // this button lets disable two installed drives in both master positions on Primary and Secondary Channel
- "Pr.M-Sc.S Off" // this button lets disable two installed drives in master position on Primary Channel and in slave position on Secondary Channel
- "Pr.S-Sc.M Off" // this button lets disable two installed drives in slave position on Primary Channel and in master position on Secondary Channel
- "Pr.S-Sc.S Off" // this button lets disable two installed drives in both slave positions on Primary and Secondary Channel
.
.
- "Pr.Master On" // this button lets reenable one installed drive in master position on Primary Channel
- "Pr.Slave On" // this button lets reenable one installed drive in slave position on Primary Channel
- "Sc.Master On" // this button lets reenable one installed drive in master position on Secondary Channel
- "Sc.Slave On" // this button lets reenable one installed drive in slave position on Secondary Channel
-
- "Pr.Mas-Sl On" // this button lets reenable two installed drives in master and slave positions on Primary Channel
- "Sc.Mas-Sl On" // this button lets reenable two installed drives in master and slave positions on Secondary Channel
-
- "Pr.M-Sc.M On" // this button lets reenable two installed drives in both master positions on Primary and Secondary Channel
- "Pr.M-Sc.S On" // this button lets reenable two installed drives in master position on Primary Channel and in slave position on Secondary Channel
- "Pr.S-Sc.M On" // this button lets reenable two installed drives in slave position on Primary Channel and in master position on Secondary Channel
- "Pr.S-Sc.S On" // this button lets reenable two installed drives in both slave positions on Primary and Secondary Channel

- IMPORTANT: After clicking on needed button you'll see "Processing..." in main window caption
!!!Be patient, don't click any button till "Processing..." caption will be changed to "Starforce Nightmare"


3. System requirements
This tool is designed for using under Windows XP-Windows 2003 Server (Beta support for Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows 98 and Windows 95)
(IMPORTANT: This tool will not work under Windows 95)
(On Windows2000 systems your host should not be administrated externally by another main computer in the network, else you will not be able to run it properly)


4. Known issues
Since starforce version 3.4.65.09 to prevent old star**** methods for deactivating
cd drives starforce goes a very hardware incompatible way. StarForce protected game tries
to reset ide channel before it begins to check protected disk. Therefore this can take up
to 2 minutes before starforce begins with its disk check. All users, who have CD
drive on SCSI controller, ATAPI CD Drive on ATA/RAID controller, CD drive on USB controller
and even coming hardware innovation called CD drive on SATA controller, all those users are
involved by this hardware incompability issue of Starfore protection. This hardware
incompability appears even than, if you remove all your drives from IDE channel physically
and deactivate your IDE channels in BIOS to set needed resources free, also you don't even
need to use our program to find it out. That's, what you get with Starforce.
It seems, starforce team doesn't care about its hardware compability and not just that, they
don't care about software compability of their product, for which they want money.
If they try to reset the channel, they "play" with priority system of windows os, therefore don't
wonder if your computer will crash or after few times starting the starforce protected game
in such environment you will not be able to start any windows application more. It happens since
starforce version 3.4.65.09 and above.
On our test systems we were very often able to reproduce this software crash issue.
As you see, all what starforce has done before is useless. What they added to the protection
is just rapidly increased hardware and software incompability, nothing more, nothing less.
It's diffucult to imagine, what will be next hardware/software incompability level, if starforce
tries to prevent methods present in this program. How far they will go with their paranoid
idea to don't care about the hardware and software compability of their protection?
How it will work on coming PCI Express? How it will work with controllers in native mode?
I have already noticed many problems with starforce and native mode controllers.
For example most of Nforce2,3+ users can already set their IDE controller in native mode since
windows xp sp1> http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/Native-modeATA.mspx
Just add to registry
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PnP\Pci]
"EnableNativeModeATA"=dword:00000001

And in the near feature native mode for IDE controllers will be necessity for coming windows
systems to get "Windows hardware logo" from Microsoft. As you see, the world of hardware
don't stay on the same level, but all what starforce do is degrading its hardware and software
compability.
If you, as game developer or distributer, bring your software, games or updates to users
you have to take into account, that even with update of starforce protection the compability of
your software will rapidly sink instead expected improvements. Especially by considering last
events.
Still want to protect your games with starforce?
As user you have to take into account, that if you buy new hardware, for example, just
new motherboard, it may happen, that your favorite games will not run on such system
due the hardware incompability with starforce protection. Or if you are already a
owner of last computer hardware and starforce game started till now without problems, than you
can just install update on your game and you will no more be able to run it from original
disk on your computer.
Still want to buy such games protected by starforce?
You see, to create this program you need deep expert knowledge of hardware
architecture and as you see, we have it, else this program wouldn't exist.
All, what I want to say with, my opinion described above is not just yeasty words, it is
reality. So think about it, what you buy for your money.

PS: it works fine even for starforce version 3.4.65.11, but as described above, by
using the function "deactivate channel" since version 3.4.65.09 you may have to wait up
to 2 minutes till starforce finished its senseless trying to reset your channel.
It is the problem of hardware incompability of starforce and appears on every system
without physically installed ATAPI drives on IDE controller.
By using the function of deactivating cd drives separately it should start immediately :)

5. Contacts
If you have some comments and suggestions, send your mail to: starforce.for.de@gmail.com

Anyway thanks!

[Crypton]

Ok, thanks for posting, just as a reminder (even though I seriously think something is going on with starforce and hardware) I believe even though you downloaded that from somewhere besides the official site, I think it is fine, and is an older version, so its possible something went wrong. But cannot "prove that" right now.

I am unable to locate my versions atm, well, my own fault, I have everything I "keep" on another PC which is running Linux, well, the same time I answered this post yesterday, I was waiting for my new Kernel to compile, and evidentally, I messed up a setting somewhere, as it wont boot lol, anyways, thats no prob to fix, I just have to go through the config again and find where it is messed up then recompile, though no time atm. So I cannot search the drives since its not up and running currently.

However.. Enough about my personal problems, do you have another computer around? If you do, you may want to pull the cd/dvd drive from the current pc and put into the other system and see if it works, it may be something such as registry entries on the current system.

But! On a side note, do you have "Auto Play" enabled on the drive? If not, try enabling it as it may be causing it to not load the contents on the CD/DVD. Some programs will disable autoplay such cases as Nero can sometimes disable it in order to prevent autorun on XP when inserting a blank disc during the start of a burn process.

Try those options if your able to, and I will be kicking my linux box in the side, thoguh I cannot garantee I even have any SF remover apps still laying around on my storage drives, :P I clean once a week and remove crap I download. But I do keep "some" things, jsut not sure if any of them are one of them things lol.

I am tired, and this Linux box is making me pull my hair out. I usually don't have too many probs on Linux, but I was messing with some settings to see if I could shave some size off the kernel by not including some modules, and maybe even improve the overall performance. Anyways, according to the errors, its IDE related as it cannot mount the boot drive :P

[badwulf]

Thanks for all the trouble! I'm pretty sure the drive is shot. I've been in contact with Dell tech support about this problem for a couple days and nothing was resolved except for them to send me a new drive, which they did yesterday and once installed no probs. Thank God I sprung for the extended warranty. Anyway no worries now, but thanks for everything. I have learned a valuable lesson and will avoid all games with starforce protection like the plague from now on.

[Crypton]

ya, thats what Plextor had told me, but it is strange, there are several posts around the web having similar encounters after running SF Remover, I am waiting to hear back from SF Tech Support, they asked me to submit a log of the problem, and errors ect.. so I did, and, still waiting :P

[NITROUS SYSTEM]

I think i saw that problem around the net too!!!You did the right thing to Report ...